Book Review: Watchmen: The Art of the Film Full review is relocated to parkablogs.com at Book Review: Watchmen: The Art of the Film Parka Blogs Art Book Stores Hi there, if you're still reading this, you should head over to the new parkablogs.com for the latest art book reviews. I've also just recently created a few online art book stores on my blog. There are art books relating to animation, concept art, comics, manga, individual artists, movies, and Japanese anime art books.Here are the links back to the art book stores on parkablogs.com:USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Japan 日本Help bookmark the stores or post links on your blog's sidebar! The more visitors I have at the stores, the more giveaways and contests I can organise.Thanks. Parka Blogs has moved I've moved parkablogs.blogspot to parkablogs.com.All new art book reviews will be posted over there in the future. I will no longer be updating this blogspot account.Do update your bookmarks and your RSS feed so you can access the new content. Thanks everyone for the support so far. Book Review: Massive Black Volume 1 The first thing I noticed about the Massive Black art book is that it's titled Volume 1. It's safe to guess that there's going to be other volumes in the future. That is great because this book is very good.If you have no idea who or what is Massive Black, here's a short history I found on Ballistic Publishing page:Founded in 2002 by a group of passionate developers, Massive Black has grown to become a powerhouse of the entertainment industry—particularly in the areas of concept art, illustration, 3D, animation and intellectual property development. During its six-year history, the company has worked on 210 projects, generating a staggering 30,000 pieces of concept art for games, film, television, graphic novels, toys, and advertising.The book is a paperback edition housed inside a slipcase. There are 192 pages and they are relatively glossy. The binding is great too. This book is a fingerprint magnet, and I left a few when I first held it.Right at the start is an inspiring company's history. You'll get to read about how they started the company with $6000 to build it to a world class art studio where their art workshops look no different from rock concerts.Inside the pages contain an impressive portfolio of illustrations and concept art created for too many clients. There are character designs, environment paintings and 3D modelings. The level of technical quality is top notch, of course. Because the clients are mainly from the movie and gaming industry, most of the art pieces relate to the fantasy and sci-fi genre, oftentimes dark. It's like entering a different world just by looking at the paintings, the characters.Massive Black Volume 1 has managed to put a smile of art lust and fascination on my face. It's highly recommended for concept artists, art directors, video game art lovers and people who just like good art.Do check out the Massive Black homepage as well, for more illustrations in their art galleries.Special thanks to Kelvin Chan for providing the book for this short review. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.You might have to get the book from third party merchants on Amazon because not all Amazon sites stock the book themselves, at least at the time of this writing.Country-specific Amazon links for this book: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.deBallistic Publishing is also accepting orders on their website as well. Book releases for New York Comic Con 2009 Here's a list of books I found on that would be appearing in New York Comic Con 2009 on 6 - 8 Feb. Anyway, here's the original page where I found it on Amazon. Comic & art book releases 3-4 Feb 2009 Seems like a lot of comic books are coming out for the first week of February 2009.I encourage readers to support their local comic retailers whenever possible. Visiting comic shops is cool. Book Review: Once Upon a Time Here's a nostalgic book authored by Amy Weinstein, a curator. She has collected a great amount of children books published by McLoughlin Brothers. There are many classics like Mother Goose, Tom Thumb and other less well known stories. Right at the start is an introduction to McLoughlin Brothers and the history of children books.The illustrations are collected in the book, with captions. Children books in the past has a very unique artistic style, with respect to colouring and penciling. Throughout the book, the captions also explain the various influences on the books, such as the appearance of flags to show patriotism.This book will serve as a useful reference for artists into children illustrations. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Photos from Massive Black Workshop Jan 2008 Irene Gallo just recently blogged about the Massive Black workshop held in Seattle in Jan 2009 and has provided tons of great photos from the event.Great stuff. Book Review: The Art of Porco Rosso Porco Rosso, the movie, is actually based on a 15-page water-coloured manga by Hayao Miyazaki. Included in the book are 3 pages from that manga and they look really fantastic.The only one thing I don't like about the book is there are too much screenshots from the movie. The concept art consists of character designs, airplane designs, publicity posters and storyboards. I love that they included the film ending credit illustrations. Overall, the amount of concept art is still overwhelmed by the film stills.Right at the end, there are over 60 pages of the screenplay, broken down to story beats with captions. There are also 5 full black and white pages from the original manga.There's also not much writeup except to explain a little history on the story.This book is still good just that it's not as great compared to the art-of books released for later movies.If you like this book, you might also want to check out the other art-of books I have reviewed for Studio Ghibli's movies. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book:Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de ArtOrder - Blog of Jon Schindehette Today's featuring art blog, ArtOrder, belongs to Jon Schindehette.He's the Wizards of the Coast’s senior Dungeons and Dragons art director.I found the blog from ConceptArt, where Irene Gallo posted a link to an interview she did with Joe Schindehette.So check out ArtOrder! There are lots of fantastic art featured there. Oh, he has a Flickr photostream as well. Book Review: How to Draw Noir Comics Shawn Martinbrough has illustrated comics for DC Comics, Vertigo, and Marvel Comics, ranging from Batman, Superman, and X-Men, to King James, based on superstar athlete Lebron James. He's an accomplished artist and it's great he shares his tips on drawing noir comics with this book.Everything in the book is explained simply and clearly with lots of personal examples. He tries to address the many approaches to creating noir comics and does them well. For example when explaining the tools he used, he would talk on the type of ink to buy (fade and erase-proof), how to maintain them and choosing the right tools for the job.The main bulk of the book deals with comic creation specific to noir style. He explains the ways to create mood, lighting and texture to aid the story. And also touches the comic creation part like paneling, pacing, creating drama, choosing backgrounds, using references and more. All the examples included are well caption to emphasis the techniques reviewed.At the end of the book is a 16-page noir style graphic novel to show readers the finished product.This book is a great introduction to noir comics and serves as a great reference.You can view more of Shawn Martinbrough's work at Verge Entertainment, which is a company he founded with his partners.Thanks to Kelvin Chan for providing the book for this short review. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Book Review: The Masters of Illusions Here's another interesting book on optical illusions. It's sort of a catalog book that presents the illustrations page after page. The illustrations are only accompanied by a short caption on the facing page, which explains the illusions. There's also a short section on sculptures.It's a visually entertaining book that will bring a smile of awe and wonder on the face.If you like optical illusions, also check out Masters of Deception. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Comic & art book releases 27-28 Jan 2009 Here are some comics and art book releases coming up.Among this seemingly random list you might spot the Massive Black Vol 1 art book. It's going for US$55 on Amazon via a third party comic book seller.I encourage readers to support their local comic retailers whenever possible. Visiting comic shops is cool. For a war movie Rescue Dawn has almost no conflicts I've just finished watching Rescue Dawn a few days ago. A few of my colleagues also watched it. Some liked it, others not too much.For a war movie based in Vietnam, somehow I just can't feel the conflict and the OMG-what-are-they-going-to-do moments. While Christian Bale was tortured continuously, at no time did I think he was going to die. When he decides to escape, one of his prisoner friends threatens to tell on him. That's the only conflict in the movie. There was no tension anywhere else.This is a very strange movie, especially when it's rated at 90% on rottentomatoes. Book Review: Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative This is one of the three instructional books written by Will Eisner. The other two are Comics and Sequential Art and Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative.Telling a good story is an incredibly difficult. In this book, Will Eisner shares with readers some of things to be aware of when tackling storytelling using comics.He talks about techniques to use to help build a more convincing story. This would include comic tools like lettering, building momentum, using visual clues and writing. Examples include how props (i.e. guns) are held to reveal human characteristics.There are lessons on how to engage readers, how readers think and mistakes to avoid. These are followed with lots of comic strip examples — including a selection from different comic artists. Unfortunately, they aren't captioned page by page like it was done on his other books. The comic examples are great, you know it but you don't know why they work.The book doesn't really go in depth into all aspects of storytelling. There's no talk on character development, story arcs, conflict management and specific story elements and tools.Overall, this is still a very useful book for anyone who's just starting out and thinking of drawing their own comics. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book:Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Book Review: Comics and Sequential Art This is one of the three instructional books written by Will Eisner. The other two are Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative and Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative.The book focuses on the creation of comics and the various techniques one can use. Specifically, it talks about the why the techniques work and the concepts behind. The various lessons touch on timing, framing, composition, expressive anatomy, writing for comics and other application of comics.Every page of comics included that serve as examples come with captions. They explain the effect to achieve on readers. One example would be to tilt a composition of a moving train to simulate the rocking on the tracks.How Will Eisner uses his panels and framing is amazing. He can use doorways or windows on a plane as frames, and he can so easily blend his panels together using the environment. Paneling and pacing when done right really just enhances the story. You'll see and understand why it works. It's all explained.This book will serve as a very good introduction to comic artists. Professionals might learn some new ways of doing things too. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book:Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Northlanders Vol. 1: Sven The Returned Northlanders tells a savage tale of a warrior, Sven, returning back to his homeland to take back what belongs to him, or whatever that's left. In his path, he looks at his exile, sleeps with ridiculously beautiful enemies, and takes down all who opposes him, of course. The plot's written by Brian Wood, straight forward, well paced.I like the artistic style for the comic, particularly the stylized character designs, paneling and colouring. The illustrator is Davide Gianelice.And since I don't usually buy comics nowadays, this copy is from Kelvin Chan.Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Shane Prigmore Shane Prigmore Book Review: Swede Illustrations This is essentially a catalog book to advertise Swede illustrators and their work. Each artist or design firm comes with contact information and a small sample of their work.There's a great variety of artistic style showcased, ranging from collages, political cartoons, vector, fine art and other forms of digital art. There is no common motive or concept since this is a catalog book.Oh, the price is pretty hefty as well, published by Page One. Not sure if it's worth the money unless you're in Sweden looking for local artist. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book:Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Book Review: Watchmen (Absolute edition) Seeing that the Watchmen movie is coming out soon, I figured I had to put up a review on the book. It is the first time I'm reading the Watchmen and it took me 2 days.Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons has created a wonderful dark mystery thriller. This isn't really a superhero story since only Dr Manhattan has supernatural powers. That really surprised me a bit because why are there costume adventurers? The best part has got to be the storytelling, unveiling of events and character interactions. At the end of each chapters includes back stories like letters, biography (The Owl), newspaper reports from inside the comic world.For the Absolute edition, John Higgins is colorist and he has done a superb job at recoloring the whole series. The atmosphere created is really great and feels like the war is looming all the time.So what's different about the Absolute edition, compared to the hardcover or the paperback? Well, this book is huge and that makes the panels easier to read. The paper quality is thick, white and reproduces the colour brilliantly. Right at the end, there's lots of extra goodies like writeup on the creation process of Watchmen and its characters, some pages of scripts and rough panels developed for them, unpublished promotional posters and other stuff.Comic readers should seriously consider getting the book. It's currently the top seller on Amazon.I would recommend reading the book first before watching the movie. It's really hard for movie adaptations to be better because books offer subtlety so much better.Oh, and check out Watching the Watchmen, which is making-of for this book.Special thanks to Jonrob for providing the book for this short review. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book:Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Comic & art book releases 20-21 Jan 2009 Here are some comics and art book releases coming up.I encourage readers to support their local comic retailers whenever possible. Visiting comic shops is cool. Book Review: Japanese Comickers 2 This is the 2006 sequel to Japanese Comickers that was published in 2003. Featured here are Shigeki Maeshima, Tatsuyuki Tanaka, Waka Miyama, Lily Hoshino, Jeong Juno, Hyung-Tae Kim, Kuroboshi Kouhaku, Haccan, Kaouru Yukifuna, Shukei, Chen Shu-Fen & Pin-Fan, and Noa. Some are from Taiwan and Korea if you actually know the artist.Although the subtitle says "draw manga and anime like japan's hottest artists", this is not strictly a tutorial book. It shows you how these artists create their work rather than show you how to draw them. Still, a lot of techniques and tips can be picked up from the captions as they go through the working process.Each artist comes with a few pages of full page art as their gallery. There's also a short introduction and bio looking at their tools, favorite artists and published work.I guess this book would be useful for artists who already know anatomy and are looking to learn some additional drawing tips.If you like this book, check out Comickers Art too.Special thanks to Kelvin Chan for providing the book for this short review. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book:Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Paul Lasaine Paul Lasaine is a production designer working in the film industry. Looking at his blog, I would say he's more in the animation industry.He has work on a few films which includes Surf's Up, The Prince of Egypt, Shark's Tale, Lord of the Rings and many more. On his blogs, he post a generous amount of concept art from these films. They are mainly on environment paintings. Additionally, he shares a few digital painting tutorials as well. I'm glad to say that I've the art book for Surf's Up, which I like very much.Link: Blog of Paul Lasaine Book Review: Sketches of Daphne Yap Daphne Yap is a freelance artist working in Los Angeles doing concept design.As this book is on sketches, don't expect anything polished, although some of the details are intricately rendered with pencils. There are concept designs on fashion, creatures, insect ladies (no typo here), sea creature ladies (no typo here as well), toy designs and other sketches.The theme throughout has a heavy focus on surrealism and fantasy. The pencil sketching style might not appeal to everyone. I personally prefer pen and ink sketches more. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book:Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Pictures of Absolute Sandman with Slipcase I love looking at people's bookshelves and see what they've got. So today, I did a search for Absolute Sandman on Flickr. All pictures shown in this entry are from Flickr and will link back to their respective owners.Absolute Sandman is actually a 4-volume hardcover compilation of all the Sandman issues. It comes with a slipcase. You can read more about Sandman and its history on Wikipedia.Notice how the Absolute editions have more colours added on. Oh, and notice the size difference too.I haven't got a chance to read any Sandman yet, but I shall find a way to get them. Here are some Amazon links if you want to find out more on the books. The reviews on are overwhelmingly positive.Country-specific Amazon links for Volume 1: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.deCountry-specific Amazon links for Volume 2: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.deCountry-specific Amazon links for Volume 3: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.deCountry-specific Amazon links for Volume 4: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Book Review: Shadowline: The Art of Iain McCaig Iain McCaig (wikipedia link) has been in the art industry doing work for movie studios for a long time. In this book contains illustrations created for Star Wars prequel, Harry Potter and his concept art for other projects. Most of his work are belong to the fantasy genre.In this book, a fictional interviewer called Bryon is created to introduce readers to the artwork and bring them into Iain McCaig's imaginative world. It's pretty amusing and reads like some fantasy adventure. My minor quibble would be that there isn't a biography of his illustrious career.Insight Editions is the publisher of this thick and big book at 240 pages. It's hardcover with a beautiful matte dust jacket.Inside are lots of glorious concept art, mainly to character designs. They are made up of paintings and sketches. Each is reproduced brilliantly on the glossy paper, showing intricate details of ink, pencil or colour strokes as well as the texture of the medium. The large pages enhance the viewing pleasure.While there are some digital paintings, most of the illustrations featured are done using traditional medium, showing texture and grain.This book is highly recommended to fans of Iain McCaig, fantasy artists, concept artists and character designers. It's very inspiring and overflows with creativity.Special thanks to Kelvin Chan for providing the book for this short review. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book:Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Book Review: Comickers Art For anyone who's just starting out drawing manga style, this book provides useful information on colouring.Different colouring tools are introduced. Each are explained on their characteristics and tips on using them.The featured artists in this series are Saya Iwasaki, Hiroki Mafuyu, Ayumi Kasai, Hamlet Okinawa, Renji Murata, Kim Jyung-Tae and Houden Eizo. These artists goes through tips on their colouring process with their tools: markers, coloured ink, water colour, acrylic paint and digital colouring. These are step by step tutorials with detailed captions.Additionally, there are Q&A interviews with some of the artists.Right at the end is a gallery containing illustrations created from a variety of medium. These are from other manga artists.This book is a great book for beginners. Experts might learn something new too, especially on exploring new colouring techniques and medium.If you like this book, check out Japanese Comickers 2 also. Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.Country-specific Amazon links for this book:Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de Comic & art book releases 13-14 Jan 2009 Unfortunately, I'm unable to list every single comic or art book release due to lack of information and resources.This list below is my quickest way to show you visually what's coming up.In any case, I encourage readers to support their local comic retailers whenever possible. Visiting comic shops is cool. Open Season 2 and Shrek straight to DVD Do you know that Open Season 2 is a straight-to-dvd (Amazon link)? Or do you even know it exists?The trailer doesn't look very good. By the way, they have a straight-to-dvd addition to Shrek as well, called Shrek The Halls (Amazon link). And they are selling that for $12 for a 22 minutes video. Not really worth the money. Coraline, Gundam, Tim Maughan Books and stuff Coraline the movieIt's coming out in February this year. Coraline is based on a book written by Niel Gaiman, and the movie is directed by Henry Selick.There are already a few Coraline books released as promotional tie up to the movie. The one that's on my shopping list is the hardcover Coraline movie visual companion (Amazon link). Notcot has two fabulous entry on Coraline as well. They look like props from the movies. Read here and here.There's also a graphic novel version which was released in June 2008 (Amazon link). linesandcolors just had a short writeup about the Coraline graphic novel.Gundam's 30th AnniversaryThis year is also Gundam's 30th anniversary. It seems that there will be two art books released to commemorate the anniversary. Both are in Japanese though. I hope there will be English translations.Massive Black art bookIt seems that the Massive Black art book vol 1 would be out on 13 January 2009. Not sure if the source is accurate because there's still no news from Ballistic Publishing.Tim Maughan BooksThis blog by Tim Maughan is actually very similar to Parka Blogs. Instead, he reviews mainly Japanese art books, anime and other stuff from Japanese culture. There are lots of great reviews and plenty of pictures to see.Animation books preview for 2009This animation books preview is done by Amid Amidi of cartoonbrew.com. The few books that caught my eyes are Two Guys Named Joe: Master Animation Storytellers Joe Grant and Joe Ranft. I've heard much about the two Joes but don't actually know anything more other than the fact that they used to work for Disney and Pixar. Both have, sadly, passed away. Hopefully the book would be a good tribute to them and their work.